Products and Tools

HIPAA Privacy & Security Online Training

Now Updated for new ARRA Changes!

Looking for affordable, ongoing privacy/security training with no administrative demands?  We have two perfect solutions. With our two online training modules, your medical practice can meet federal compliance requirements by training employees and physicians from home or at work. Our online privacy training covers the very same informational guidance issued by the Office of Civil Rights and is available in a robust 3 hour course or a one hour "refresher" course (average historical training times).  Covered topics include:

• HIPAA Privacy Overview

• Notice of Privacy Practices Requirements

• Uses & Disclosures of Protected Health Information (PHI)

• Minimum Necessary Disclosures Rules

• Incidental Uses & Disclosures

• Patient Rights

• Business Associate Rules

• Personal Representatives - Who Qualifies?

• Marketing using PHI

• Public Health Disclosures

• Workers Compensation Disclosures

• Research Related Requirements

• Government Access to PHI

• Safeguards (Security) - Administrative, Technical, & Physical
   

Your Company's Federally Mandated Training Requirements:

Section 164.530 of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) patient information privacy regulations state, "A covered entity must train all members of its workforce (physicians included) on the policies and procedures with respect to protected health information required by this subpart, as necessary and appropriate for the members of the workforce to carry out their function within the covered entity." 

Section 164.530 states that necessary and appropriate training must be provided to:

• Each new member of the workforce must be trained within a reasonable period of time after the person joins the workforce,

• Each member of the workforce whose functions are affected when HIPAA policies and procedures change, and

• The covered entity must document that training has been provided, and

• Maintain a written or electronic record of such training.

MediCo Unlimited, LLC is your cost effective answer to this administrative nightmare.  Your employees can become trained without taking up precious work hours.  They can train from the comfort of their home and bring the administrator a report showing they have completed the training. 

The breakdown of content is as follows:

• 180 pages/slides of learning material (not including test questions)

• 15 Lessons / Chapters

• 36 Case Studies / Real Life Situations / Key Concepts

• 13 Practice Questions

• 67 Test Questions

HIPAA Privacy & Security Training Fees (3 hour course):
 

Retests: 25% of fee if retaken within 30 days.
Registration fees are non-refundable.

Refresher Course

The "Refresher" course addresses the core issues of privacy and security.  The course takes approximately one hour to complete and costs $39 per student.  It is recommended that each  employee take the full course first, then take the refresher course in subsequent years.  It is recommended that all employees take the full course every 2 years.

Pricing / Discounts Note: This program can be discontinued or modified without notice at the discretion of MediCo Unlimited, LLC management.

Go to Top

HIPAA Manuals

Now updated for ARRA!  17 Policies, Forms, and Letters changed!

The Office of Civil Rights (OCR), the HIPAA enforcement arm of the federal government, states, "It is expected that covered entities will utilize the input of prudent professionals involved in health care activities when developing [HIPAA Privacy & Security] policies and procedures."
 

Our manuals are offered as one tool to help smaller healthcare practices become compliant with the requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) patient information privacy and security regulations.  These are “working manuals”, not one containing the history of HIPAA and other broad educational material.  We have assumed you have a basic understanding of what HIPAA requires and its key terms and provisions.  If that is not the case, please engage a qualified professional to assist in your compliance efforts or visit http://www.cms.hhs.gov/hipaa/hipaa2/default.asp for background information and terminology. 

The Privacy Manual (Table of Contents) contains over 75 model policies, forms, and protocols, letters, and gap assessment worksheets. Each section of the manual pertains to a critical aspect of the HIPAA regulations. A "Privacy Essentials" manual is also offered for a lower price.

The Security Manual (Table of Contents) contains 47 model policies, and 23 forms to record common activities, and more assessment worksheets. Each section of the manual pertains to a critical aspect of the HIPAA regulations.

The Contingency Planning / Disaster Recovery Manual (Table of Contents) contains 13 model policies that cover everything from floods to recovery of data.

Each section of the manual pertains to a critical aspect of the HIPAA regulations.

Your legal counsel should review these manuals and help you customize their policies and forms for your practice, as well as ensure that it meets your state’s privacy requirements, which may be more strict than the federal HIPAA requirements, or even other federal requirements beyond privacy rights contained in HIPAA.

We believe our manuals are the most complete on the market. They were written by an Administrator FOR Administrators. We are certain these model compliance manuals will help you in your compliance quest. 

We also provide gap analysis and online training along with the manuals if your firm is interested. You can reach us by calling (913) 851-1887.

Go to Top

Breakeven Analysis

Before you walk into the room with an insurance company to discuss reimbursement for services, you must know the minimum rate of reimbursement required by your practice to break even (or maintain the status quo financially).  You need to know the reimbursement rate required to pay for fixed and variable costs, physician expenses, and to still have some profit left over. Knowing this information will allow you to further investigate practice operations and improve financial performance.

By providing us with minimal practice expense and procedure data, we will determine your practice's cost of doing business as a percentage of current Medicare and provide a detailed report of the findings.  The data will be broken down by variable costs, fixed costs, physician expenses, and even revenue per Relative Value Unit (RVU).

Medicare reimbursed $37.8975 for each (RVU) your physicians produced in 2007.  Do you know your practice's dollar cost for each RVU produced?  What you don't know, can hurt.

For the cost of a few office visits, you can obtain the answer to this critical breakeven question.  The analysis can be performed with a sampling of your most voluminous CPT codes or by using all CPT codes that are charged by your practice. You supply the data and we supply a concise, bound, summary of results. Click here for a screen shot of one page of the report.

Hundreds of physicians encompassing 15 specialties and ASCs have ordered this product in an effort to better understand their cost structure and the contracting requirements of their practices. They are gaining pricing concessions from payors and are controlling costs better because they are armed with this powerful data.

Now is the time to begin this critically important analysis for your practice's success. 

Go to Top

H.E.L.P. Program (Kansas City Metro Only)

HELP stands for the Healthcare Executive Liaison Program.  It's an innovative way for your practice to access yearlong executive consulting services without the executive cost. It's an inexpensive lifeline for your management team.  HELP is a program that provides an avenue for physicians and administrators to discuss a multitude of business issues with qualified consultants for the cost of attending one professional seminar. This program is particularly suited for managers who do not have a formal business education or longevity in the healthcare field. Rather than spending thousands of dollars each year on national conferences (disguised vacations), memberships, and subscriptions not targeted to you practice’s needs, doesn’t it make more sense to spend less and get more targeted support? Controlling overhead starts here.

Here's how it works.  For a flat semi-annual or annual fee that is comparable to the cost of attending one professional seminar, your practice can have year-long access to the following basic consultative services:

• Unlimited email and phone consultative service. This email format provides advice within two business days to your most nagging questions. Short phone conversations are permitted as well (usually under 5 minutes duration).

• Dedicated face-to-face time with a consultant each month for 30 minutes at a specified offsite location. This feature alone will pay for the membership!!

Think of this program as One Source Shopping.  Some examples of the types of issues that can be resolved with a HELP membership include:

• When you need to get a quick business answer from a reliable source in a timely manner.

• When you wonder if the way you are measuring practice results is correct or consistent with industry standards or when you want to obtain industry data but don’t know exactly how to get it.

• When you have questions about health care contracts, financial services options (like banking and borrowing), or compliance issues.

• When you want to learn how other practices handle certain business problems but are cautious in approaching them due to anti-trust or competition fears?

• When you need the unbiased view of a consultant at one of your Board meetings but don’t want the expense.

What this program is NOT.  This program is not a substitute for having consultative expertise working with you on complex projects such as planning, budgeting, contracting, assessments, compliance, and coding issues. However, MediCo Unlimited is available for engagement on such projects. Instead, this program is a compliment to those services and is a vehicle to get quick answers to your straightforward questions, and timely solutions to well defined problems.

Utilizing this program will either decrease your more expensive consulting costs or open a whole new avenue for you to gain important knowledge at a reasonable price. This program is conceptually similar to the “Ask a Nurse” or “TeleNurse” programs provided by many hospitals across the nation. However, the HELP program has an added dimension of “face time” that those programs lack. 

Call us at (913) 851-1887 to learn more.

Go to Top

SafeGuard Suite

A Collaborative Marketing Effort With:   

Just think what this product, along with our gap analysis, can do to prevent or identify potential violations in the first place!

In addition to rules requiring staff and physician training, the statement of the general HIPAA Security Rule, Section 164.306, requires covered entities to:

1. Ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of all electronic protected health information (EPHI) the covered entity creates, receives, maintains, or transmits;

2. Protect against any reasonably anticipated threats or hazards to the security or integrity of such information;

3. Protect against any reasonably anticipated uses or disclosures of such information that are not permitted or required by the Privacy Rule; and

4. Ensure compliance by its workforce.

To address these basic ongoing vulnerabilities contemplated in HIPAA regulations, MediCo and our partner, Absolute Computer Solutions, Inc., combined three products in a simple annual preventive maintenance package.

SafeGuard Suite is a “foundational” compliance solution that every company needs to ensure ongoing system integrity and staff training. This solution is designed to be a budget conscious solution as contemplated by the “budget neutral” and “scalable” language of the federal security regulations that address typical core vulnerabilities.  This package saves 10-30% over purchasing these products separately. A prepay discount of 10% also adds to the savings. Prices are dependent upon the number of servers and employees your organization has, but subscriptions can start for as little as a couple hundred dollars per month.

Please note that SafeGuard Suite is not a comprehensive analysis of the existing privacy and security gaps in your organization. We strongly encourage you to perform a gap analysis as a first step toward HIPAA compliance. We can help in this area as well.

The Product Suite:

Alloy Network Inventory Analyzer: Undetected changes to your network can compromise patient data, system performance, and system integrity. Alloy Network Inventory Analyzer is a comprehensive, budget-friendly and easy-to-deploy Network Inventory solution that provides you with accurate and up-to-date information from every computer on your network. During system upgrades, accurate audit information helps to assess the budget for required changes in hardware and software. In addition, Alloy Network Inventory Analyzer allows proactive management of organizational changes. Key Features of this product include: Quick Deployment, Automated Asset Discovery, On-demand Audits, and Web Reporting.

SafeGuard Plus: Knowing what “holes” are present in your system allows you to take quick action to close them. Safeguard Plus provides firewall critical updates, addresses error log findings, implements service patches, provides backup validation, protection from malicious software, password management, log-in monitoring and other programs that address many security and business continuity risks. The reports come to you automatically.

Online HIPAA Privacy & Security Training:  Our product (detailed above on this page) gets better with this package.  All physicians are trained for FREE and any new employees hired during the subscription period are also trained for FREE.  Pricing under this package is discounted 10% off retail prices as well. Larger groups enjoy larger discounts as well.  You simply can't train as comprehensively and as inexpensively anywhere else - including "doing it yourself".

Think of SafeGuard Suite as a premium compliance package at an economical price.  In our opinion, it's the minimum you need to do to show you have a "live" privacy and security program intended to safeguard Electronic Protected Health Information (EPHI).

Call us at (913) 851-1887 or (913) 262-7977 to learn more or subscribe.

Go to Top

Customer Service Essentials - NEW!

This online training helps all customer service and collections personnel improve the service level, profitability, and public perception of the corporation through effective professional communication. This is a short 1.5 to 2.0 hour course that takes advice from industry experts and boils it down to the essential information every customer service employee needs to know. At the end of each chapter is a short quiz designed to reinforce the key concepts of the chapter.  A final score report that shows when each chapter was completed, the chapter quiz score, and overall average score can be printed for the employee's personnel file.

The course includes the following chapters:

• What is customer service?

• Customer service "rules" and guideposts

• The initial contact and preparedness

• Face to face customer service

• Telephone customer service

• Collecting from customers

• Handling criticism and mistakes

There are 70 pages/slides of learning material (not including test questions) and 33 test questions.

Your employees can become trained without taking up precious work hours.  They can train from the comfort of their home and bring their supervisor a report showing they have completed the training.

Customer Service Essentials Training Fees:
 

Registration fees are non-refundable.

Pricing / Discounts Note:  This program can be discontinued or modified without notice at the discretion of MediCo Unlimited, LLC management.

Go to Top